many of the slaves were originally brought to the island by thomas spalding, who purchased the south end of sapelo in 1802. after the end of the civil war, the freed slaves stayed, purchasing land and establishing thriving settlements on various parts of the island, then eventually consolidating the communities to hog hammock. covering 427 acres, hog hammock is now home to the remaining descendants of the original slaves and is the heart of sapelo’s gullah geechee community.

the fields around hog hammock are being returned to their agricultural roots. the gullah geechee brought seeds of several african crops, such as red cow peas and okra, with them to the new world. the “geechee red pea,” which has its origins in sierra leone, is grown as a heritage crop for the hog hammock community, meaning the plants are original varieties that were grown by historic populations and not cultivated for large-scale agriculture. hog hammock residents grow these crops to sell and sustain the community and to motivate residents to invest in their own land. the sale of red pea harvests is key to increasing economic development for the island and its remaining residents, helping to preserve their lands and culture.

another heritage crop the community is trying to reestablish is purple ribbon sugar cane, which was native to java and brought to the west indies by dutch traders in the 1800s and then to the georgia coast. the sugar cane was grown on sapelo as a plantation crop and processed in a mill on the island. researchers are now helping the community replant purple ribbon sugar cane in fields in hog hammock, and the sugar cane is pressed for its purple syrup and bottled. both purple ribbon sugar cane syrup and sapelo island red peas are sold on the mainland and prized by restaurateurs for their unique flavors.

in 2017 during hurricane irma, which directly hit sapelo island, island flooding covered the majority of hog hammock and wiped out the sugar cane and other crops. changes in weather and climate such as increased frequency of tropical storms and hurricanes are increasingly affecting the island and its residents. hog hammock is at a lower elevation than other parts of the island, leaving the community more susceptible to flooding and causing enormous consequences for its burgeoning agricultural industry. with more frequent inundation of seawater, the soil and fields are becoming less yielding for farming.

sapelo island is low enough to become a massive floodplain when the high tide line exceeds the shell-banked and salt marsh edges of the island. with increasing frequency, the high tides on sapelo island significantly exceed typical high tide marks, breaching roadways, filling marshy fields, and causing flooding overall. the salt marshes can quickly become saturated with the seawater, overriding their potential to serve as flood buffers for the inner island. beyond agriculture, the inundation of saltwater into the water table and other potable water sources means residents must find new water sources.

with rising sea levels and increased flooding risks, the hog hammock community faces an uncertain future. displaying their generational resilience, residents and heritage crops continue to endure as the sapelo island gullah geechee community fights to preserve their historic lands, culture, and way of life.

it was an unseasonably warm and sunny friday, feb. 15 – good weather for youth climate strikes across the united kingdom. before the main gathering strengthened in bonn square, the main site of oxford’s strike, a banner for the youth climate strike was unfurled off of the bridge of sighs, one of oxford’s most iconic landmarks.

by the time i arrived in the late morning, the plaza was filled with protestors of all ages, mostly school children who were skipping school to participate in the demonstration but also university of oxford students, parents, and more elderly community members.

most protestors held pickets and posters with handwritten slogans following the theme of the protest movement that the older generations have left the younger generation with a climate crisis they must fix. the subject matter of the signs overall covered an impressively broad range of climate change topics, including, “our planet is not like your actions, it’s not rubbish”; “stop climate changing before it changes the world”; “if the earth were a bank, it’d be bailed out”; and “there is no planet b.” there was also “no pollution is the only solution”; “i’d rather miss a day of school than see my planet die”; and even “harry potter and the deadly climate change” (it was oxford, after all).

the protesters’ emphasis on clever and often humorous signs contributed to the overall upbeat (or positive) atmosphere of the event.

the size of the constantly growing crowd was so great that people repeated different chants at opposite ends of the plaza. one of the more popular ones was the call and response chant of “what do we want? climate action! when do we want it? now!”

after striking in bonn square for a while, the majority of the protestors left and made a procession through oxford city centre and back around to bonn square, a trip they repeated several times over the course of the day. in addition to the convening and march, the event organizer brought in a number of speakers, including an environmental journalist and a student who did spoken word poetry. the strike as a whole was executed as a very peaceful and minimally disruptive protest without any outside intervention.

i was curious about the environmental interests of the participants, so i posed a few questions of martin parker, a student from leeds, u.k., studying math in st. catherine’s college at the university of oxford. when i asked him why he attended the strike, martin said, “i find it inspiring watching the youth strikes….and seeing it on the news. i think it’s a very exciting movement. i’m inspired by the global aspect as well. i think it’s really motivating that people are getting together across the country and across the world.”

although the interview was challenging because the crowds’ chanting was deafening, i asked martin how long he has been interested in environmentalism.

“all my life i’ve been aware and conscious of the issues facing the planet. i’ve never been involved in activism until recently,” he said. “i think it’s the same case for a lot of people, that they’ve seen movements like this coming up a lot recently and are just getting involved now.”

as a planet 世界杯欧洲预选赛免费直播 and student of environmental journalism, i was interested in what the participants of the strike thought about the importance of sharing climate stories through public communication. surveying the scene, i spotted a woman wearing a name badge, which upon closer inspection was a card which read “ask me anything, i’m a climate researcher.” she was dr. michelle cain, a science and policy research associate at the university of oxford environmental change institute. i asked her about what impact she thinks environmental storytelling has on people’s understanding and interest in the current climate situation.

“i think storytelling is very powerful and everyone can…engage with a good story,” she responded. “there are only so many articles you can read, but the ones that really grab you are the ones that are telling a good story.” covering climate events and people’s personal perspectives and experiences can encourage increased focus on and participation in global efforts to facilitate change.

today’s young people will need to contend with the implications of climate change exponentially more so than older generations, and i am proud to have witnessed youth standing in such unity for justice against what will be the greatest challenge during their lifetimes.

surrounded by protected forest, residents of ambodivohitra and land managers at the world wildlife foundation reveal how commodity crops and wood use affect on-the-ground conservation practices in the rainforests of northeast madagascar. 

learn more about the people and forests of madagascar in my story below:

we interviewed him to learn more about the initiative and the impacts the work can have on the environment and policies surrounding it.

q: how was the concept of the headwaters initiative formed?

a: i think one of the impetuses was trying to think of ways the domain is a unique asset to the university. it’s really important for them to try to establish and grow their imprint in their environmental programs among liberal arts universities. from a research perspective, the domain offers a lot of really unique opportunities because we own it and it’s so unimpacted by upstream effects; and because it all goes downstream it offers stewardship opportunities as well.

q: so, how are you monitoring these water systems? are you looking at their health? what are the impacts you’re protecting them from?

a: what we’re doing right now is laying the groundwork for more nuanced research in the future. no one has really in the past done a thorough characterization of the streams’ baseline data. we have censors in streams to log light, temperature, and tell us when the streams dry out. we have leaf litter bags to see how the environment is breaking down leaf litter and cycling carbon. what we were doing yesterday was bottling samples to get a snapshot of the stream water chemistry. it’s necessary if anyone wants to do anything more nuanced, like studying the effects of global warming: you have to know your baseline.

q: the southeast is, within north america, this big hotspot for freshwater biodiversity. why is it critical that sewanee look at its biodiversity and freshwater ecosystems?

a: well, because that makes it culturally important. it’s the salamander capital of the world right there in southern appalachia. but it’s also because animals all play their own role in their ecosystem here. if we decrease diversity there’s a good chance you can wreak havoc on some of these ecosystem services that we rely on animals for.

q: such as?

a: things like nutrient cycling, soil health, forest regeneration, trophic levels. if anyone around here is interested in hunting, those animals have to have something to feed on. like i said, soil health and forest regeneration: some of the little critters that hang out on the floor play a big role in seed dispersal and leaf litter breakdown that becomes fertilizer for the plant that grows that allows the deer to eat. the health of all of these systems, none of them are independent. it’s easier to compartmentalize them to study them, but they’re all interconnected.

q: a minute ago you called the southern appalachians the “salamander capital of the world”—

a yeah, they like to put that on coffee mugs in the smokies.

q ha! well, can you explain what bsal is and why sewanee is concerned about it?

a: yeah. bsal is essentially a form of chitrid, and a lot of people who are at least somewhat acquainted with amphibians know of chitrid came through and killed a lot of frog species, particularly in south america.

q: so, is this a viral disease?

a: no, it’s a fungal pathogen. all amphibians can breathe through their skin, and though some also have lungs, they all assimilate moisture and other things through their skin. because their skin stays wet the fungus will colonize it and cause them a lot of physiological stress.

more recently, i think it was 2014, they actually documented bsal in western europe that had been brought over from asia. a lot of animals coevolved with pathogens in their environment, but if you pick up a pathogen and move it somewhere—like in this case from asia to europe—it can completely wipe out whole populations.

because we have so many species here and the international pet trade is so thriving in atlanta, there’s big time concern among most scientists that its’s really a “when” not “if” situation for bsal to get introduced to the southern appalachians. it can cause all kinds of problems for the ecosystem services i talked about before… most people are preparing already for that. it would be sad for people like me, who are just big salamander fans, but it would be terrible for the ecosystem.

q: because the introduction of bsal is a “when” not “if” situation, how do you expect shi to contribute to monitoring bsal and preparing for its arrival?

a: well, we do the stream surveys. if certain species are found to be more vulnerable than others, we will know where they are and will recognize the areas that we’ll have to focus in on.

“plastic creates pollution right from when it’s made, and then continues to create pollution,” moore said. “it never goes away.”

moore used the 120 billion disposable coffee cups americans discard annually as an example, citing the clean water action’s rethink disposable program. she explained that alongside the 2.2 billion pounds of waste created by the coffee cups, and the strain on finite resources such as fresh water and trees, this throwaway habit also results in 4 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions every year.

the throwaway culture that has developed over the last half-century costs the environment as well as the economy: people discard first-use plastic packaging worth the equivalent of $80 billion to $120 billion annually, according to a report from the ellen macarthur foundation.

furthermore, environmental damages caused by plastic pollution, along with the greenhouse gases emitted by plastic production, cost at least $40 billion annually, according to the report.

so how do we counteract all this waste? the report offered the circular economy as the solution to plastic waste in all sectors. the circular economy’s mission is to move society away from its current reliance on disposability and unsustainable resources by redesigning products and systems in order to minimize waste and pollution.

“if we turn off the tap of plastic production, use, and waste management, we’re only left with real materials — reusables that can be used an infinite amounts of times,” moore said.

moore explained that addressing the production, distribution, and widespread use of plastic is crucial in order to make a long-term impact on both plastic pollution and climate change.

while recovery measures such as cleanups and recycling are important, they are “band-aid solutions” that don’t address the root of the problem, moore said. “you can’t get all (of the plastic) out if it keeps coming in.”

“only 9% of plastic ever created has been recycled,” moore said. “we are overflowing with plastic. recycling is not enough.”

mike schoniger, a business owner who oversees the loading and unloading of shipping containers in the port of los angeles, witnessed the limits of recycling firsthand, explaining that the “sheer volume” of recyclables is the issue. he said that because the united states lacks recycling centers, and china has refused to continue receiving and processing recyclables from the west, materials are now stacking up in shipping containers with nowhere to go.

“i’ve seen trash trucks picking (the recyclables) back up and taking them to (a) landfill,” schoniger said.

to mitigate the recycling backlog, the u.s. has started exporting recyclables to india, vietnam, malaysia, and indonesia, the new york times reports. schoniger warned that these nations do not have the infrastructure to deal with the influx of materials, and worried that it will result in illegal dumping.

“i don’t think their environment can tolerate it,” he said of the countries chosen to bear the burden of america’s waste.

“we all just think as far as the curb. we as consumers look away from our problems,” schoniger said.

moore said she knows that when it comes to plastic waste, out of sight should not mean out of mind, and that she fears the trash our species has accumulated so far “will become a layer in the earth, and (a) mark in history of when we didn’t know better.”

at upstream, moore works to stop issues like the recycling overload through measures that “stop trash at its source.” upstream works with venues, corporations, communities, and individuals to institute the circular economy on three levels: throwaway free places, throwaway free communities, and throwaway free living.

moore’s awareness of the far-reaching impacts of manmade trash began with her upbringing in staten island, new york, where, “you can’t walk on the beach without shoes because there’s so much trash,” she said.

now, at upstream, she co-leads the united states’ branch of a #breakfreefromplastic working group, recruiting new partners and orchestrating the vast web of organizations connected to solving the plastic crisis.

moore said the organizations she collaborates with “range from people working on the frontlines fighting oil production to people working (on the issue of) microplastics.”

moore explained that this multifaceted approach is crucial because every problem plastics cause is interconnected. she emphasized the importance of “collaborating to amplify each other’s stories.”

“we are all fighting the same fight. stopping a pipeline in louisiana is going to stop plastic waste in the philippines,” she said.

a recent victory that upstream collaborated on was the development of a disposable-free dining ordinance that will make berkeley, california, a leader in establishing throwaway free communities. the ordinance requires all takeout containers to be compostable and all dine-in dishes and cutlery to be reusable, while also adding a quarter surcharge to every disposable coffee cup to incentivize people to bring their own cups.

moore said she hopes to develop a widespread “culture change” that will shift people’s relationships with the items they use.

“i believe humans are incredibly adaptable. if all single-use plastics were banned, humans would adapt in a week and it would become the new normal,” moore said.

moore is raising her five-year-old daughter to embrace a waste-free future. she and her daughter buy groceries in bulk, use cloth napkins, and make their own toothpaste in mason jars.

“being throwaway-free is completely normal to her,” moore said of her daughter.

when asked what her biggest hope is for the world her daughter will be inheriting, moore answered immediately.

“i would love if she could walk on the beach and not see plastic.”

“it’s too late.”

“the change is too small to work. we need bigger corporations in it to work.”

these are the words often heard by environmentalists when arguing for more environmental protection. and although leaning on a pessimistic attitude, these feeling are not entirely wrong. it is easy to see our forests crumbling to the logging, our oceans filling up with take-out boxes, and the average global temperature showing no signs of decreasing. and with that, it is hard to notice how influential the past decades of big and small strides toward environmental protection have been. without recognizing how fruitful these efforts are, it becomes even harder to make short-term sacrifices for long-term gains.

below are some achievements that show we still have power to make a positive impact for earth.

1. the infamous ozone hole above antarctica has been found to be in recovery.

the main cause for ozone depletion was due to long-lived man-made chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (cfcs). the contained chlorine released by the sun’s energy then go on to destroy the ozone. since discovering cfcs were responsible, the montreal protocol banned its production in 1987. today, we have direct proof that the recorded ozone depletion is declining correspondingly.

2. plastic pollution is being limited by plastic bans.

washington, d.c.; san francisco; seattle; boston; kenya; chile; the united kingdom; australia; and china are just some of the cities and countries that have contributed to decreasing the amount of plastic waste. policies established to entirely ban, regulate, or tax single-use plastic bags successfully decreased this type of waste. in 2012, san francisco not only implemented the ban on single-use plastic bags but also a 10 cent charge on compliant alternative checkout bags. this legislation spearheaded a culture of reusable grocery bags that has become the norm today. and some other areas, like france, even expanded the ban to plastic plates and cutlery.

3. scientists are finding ways to restore the dying coral reefs.

coral reefs are commonly known as the “rainforests of the sea.” they provide nutrients and shelter for 25% of marine life, and they act as a natural barrier to protect coastal communities from waves, storms, and floods. due to ocean acidification, a fifth of the world’s reefs have died. one way scientists are fighting back against the pollution is by seeding reefs with coral offspring to help restore and rehabilitate this essential ecosystem.

4. science designed for sustainability — and consumers.

you can go green at home, and while you’re away from home with two growing areas of technology: solar and electric vehicles, or evs. while harvesting solar power has been around for more than a century, it was only until president bush signed the energy policy act of 2005 due to high gasoline costs that solar panels became more commercially accessible. this legislation raised the commercial investment tax credit by 30%. this generator for clean renewable power not only limits greenhouse gas emissions and helps shrink your carbon footprint, but it also can save you money long-term. the switch has been supported and encouraged through government subsidies. in 1975, solar panels costed about $100 per watt. today, our national average has dropped to $3.05 per watt. as for evs, the number of electric cars on the road is increasing and climate change-contributing emissions are decreasing. the environmental benefits become even greater when these cars are charged using renewable energy, such as solar.

5. communities are evolving to incorporate green alternatives.

here are three examples:

• walk score was founded in 2007 hoping to promote walkable neighborhoods and a shift away from necessities of a car to go about day-to-day living.

• biking has always been a good green alternative to burning fuel in order to zip around town. however, two-wheeled transportation is surging as a result of cities providing more accommodating infrastructure.

• cities all over the world are networking together through the c40 cities climate leadership group to see and advise about solutions to climate challenges. there are currently more than 90 cities whose city practitioners learn from each other about implementing sustainable actions.

6. animals and plants are getting off the endangered list.

the endangered species act recognized that diversity in our natural world is important for the continuance and survival of our ecosystems. with the driven effort of conservationists in combination with the policy, these plants and animals are a part of a longer list of species that have been taken off the endangered list in the past few years: whooping crane, eureka valley evening primrose, snow leopard, hidden lake bluecurl flower, yellowstone grizzly bear, and lesser long-nosed bat.

q: many people cringe at the idea of parasitic insects. what is it about parasites that interest you so much?

a: i think what i find so interesting about parasites is the fact that they challenge my assumptions about how the natural world works. i learned about biology, i learned about all these kinds of ecological interactions; predator and prey, and how animals evolve, defenses against predation, or competition. all of that sort of fits into a framework of how i understand the world. and these parasites come along and then give examples of things that don’t really fit that framework, and all of a sudden i realized wait a minute, the level of complexity that’s possible in nature is far beyond what i thought was possible. it’s not like i thought i knew everything about nature ahead of time. but you feel confident in saying ‘yeah, i see this hawk chasing after a squirrel. that fits into what i know of how the world works.’ and then you read or hear about how these parasites are manipulating their host, and you think that makes no sense. and i found that really interesting. it’s so novel; it’s so interesting to me.

q: how do you think photography can be used as a form of environmental communication and why might this be more effective than, say, a scientific paper?

a: photography has this advantage because we are very much visually oriented creatures. so much of our biology is based around the fact that we have such good vision. i think our brains are already well-built to take in imagery; it’s automatically stimulating for us. so, you sort of have this built-in advantage. in that sense, i think it takes a lot less effort to grab somebody’s attention. now, when it comes to changing somebody’s worldview, and inspiring their curiosity, and all those things, it takes more than just the image to do that. it takes a story, it takes context, and a better understanding of what your audience’s assumptions are. a photograph by itself can’t do all that, but it’s an amazing way into somebody’s attention. i didn’t really recognize that until i was having a conversation with my editor over that story, and he really defined my objective for that story. like, you’re not going to teach everybody about every step of this process. the magazine is only going to give you one page, one photograph. and your job is to get people to stop flipping through the magazine and read the caption. and i’ve really seen that as what the role of photography is more broadly. you can’t necessarily give somebody an entire biology lesson with a single photograph. but you can get them to be at least interested to learn about it on their own, or to listen to you talk, or to read the paper or read the article. i just think it’s this window into a larger subject.

q: in your talk “beauty and the bizarre,” you talk about photographing the emerald wasp. could you talk a bit about their relationship with cockroaches and the possible relation to parkinson’s disease? what exactly does the emerald wasp do?

a: the emerald cockroach wasp, or the emerald jewel wasp (another common name it’s known by) hunts cockroaches. but these cockroaches are larger than it, like many times. so rather than try to overpower it or kill the cockroach, it has figured out a way to immobilize its prey. it does that by leading its stinger into the back of the cockroach’s head. its stinger has special sensors that can actually detect where in the brain its stinger is, and it finds the part of the brain that is responsible for the motivation for movement in the cockroach. it then injects a venom cocktail that disrupts the dopamine activity of that part of the brain. and that’s a general way of describing a process that’s actually more complex than i understand. i know that it involves something that disrupts the dopamine activity. what that means is this cockroach can still move, but it can no longer decide to move on its own. so the wasp removes its stinger, and then it grabs the cockroach by an antenna, and by pulling on the antenna, that stimulates the cockroach to move. but if it lets go of the antenna, the cockroach can’t run away. so it’s this way of getting around the fact that its prey is too large. but it also doesn’t want to kill the prey because it’s not going to eat it itself, it’s going to actually feed it to its babies. it’s going to bury it alive with a single egg that can feed on this living cockroach that stays fresh, because it’s not dead.

so i visited the scientist frederic libersat in israel who studies the action of this venom. i went to the lab, and i photographed this. i had done some research on this biology, but i didn’t realize until after when i saw that professor give a lecture at a conference where he said “you know, we’re actually working with parkinson’s researchers to try and develop a better treatment for this disease by studying the wasp.” and that’s because the dopamine-disrupting activity of this venom has a similar mechanism to how parkinson’s works in humans. and what i don’t understand is how close that gap is. so on the one hand, it’s insane that our own brains and cockroaches brains share similar neurotransmitters. it kind of points to the common building blocks of all of the animal world, and the biological world more broadly. i don’t know how far along that collaboration is, or what the near-term implications are. i don’t know that they’re necessarily going to market with a new drug based on this, but i think the idea that they can think about the activity of this disease and the system from a mental perspective. it’s almost like a model system where the activity of this neurotransmitter and the chemistry of the cockroach’s brain is far simpler in terms of its effects on the cockroach’s behavior than our own super complicated brain and super complicated disease. so it’s a way to simplify a system and think about how to approach the much more complicated problem.

q: what’s next for you?

a: for the immediate, i’m very much trying to organize my life and take a break. but i am in the beginnings of my next project on jellyfish and using that as an example for how to think about complexity in the biological world. parasites is another example of this; it’s creatures that have something to teach us about how the world works. everybody knows about jellyfish, but even i’m just scratching the surface of how intricate and beautiful and complicated they are. to look at this thing that just looks like a bag of goo and to understand how it sees the world and has survived longer than almost any other animal on the planet, through mass extinctions. this is a cool thing that we could probably learn something from. so that’ll be the next project for me.

the bold plan, announced in late january by college president laurie l. patton, was met with resounding student and faculty support. the plan, called energy2028, details the school’s sustainable energy vision that’s aimed at both reducing middlebury’s carbon footprint and its environmental impact.

energy2028 includes commitments for middlebury to use 100% renewable energy resources, reduce overall energy consumption by 25%, and cease 100% of all direct fossil fuel investments within the next 10 years.

“this plan is true to middlebury’s culture and values,” president patton said in a statement. “it is bold and aspirational while remaining realistic and highly practical. it acknowledges that we do not have all the solutions at our disposal at this moment to meet these goals, but it commits us to make every effort to do so.”

the backstory

the middlebury board of trustees unanimously voted to divest, and indicates the institution’s commitment to a better, more sustainable future. but energy2028 was not born overnight. this decision, a key component of the new four-part plan, was the result of a six-year effort led by student activists.

middlebury, which created the country’s first undergraduate environmental studies program in 1965, has long been heralded as a beacon for environmental studies and action. however, middlebury has not always shown its commitment to the environment.

in 2012, a small group of middlebury students developed a plan for the school to divest from all fossil fuel companies in its endowment portfolio. the students presented this plan to the middlebury administration where they were met with a resounding “no.” to divest from fossil fuel companies was a dangerous economic move, and simply too bold at the time.

students led the charge

while met with negativity, student involvement — and hope — in divestment never wavered. as the original students graduated, new ones had to take the helm and continue to promote divestment and pressure the administration to act against climate change.

student turnover created a slow moving campaign toward divestment from fossil fuels, but eager students accepted the challenge. after about three generations of students carried out the work of those before them, progress started to be made.

alice butler and leif taranta, two of the student organizers of the current divestment campaign, picked up where students left off a few years ago. “most of the members on the board did not see the vision we had,” butler said. “through most of the campaign process, we felt that a lot of the administration did not really take us seriously.”

a small group of students regularly held protests and sit-ins to demonstrate their displeasure with middlebury’s investment in fossil fuels, but never quite created enough noise to really push the administration. at times when momentum slowed, however, the campaign aimed to gain broader student support for divestment.

in a student government referendum last spring, more than 80% of the middlebury student body voted in support of divestment, transforming a casual student group into a movement with serious implications and support. an identical faculty referendum was held this fall, yielding similar results to the student positions.

the results were clear: the middlebury community was calling for divestment.

a smart change in tactics

over the course of about three semesters, the divestment campaign grew quickly. across campus, students pinned small orange patches to their coats and backpacks showing their support for the movement. group discussions, protests and sit-ins grew, increasing the pressure on the administration to divest. and student organizers began making ethics, justice, and economic arguments for divestment.

“so often we were told we didn’t know what we were talking about and to stay in our lane,” taranta said, as a smile grew on his face. “but then we started attending town hall discussions and asking questions that faculty and board members couldn’t answer.”

shifting from a protest-based approach to one focused on research and intellectual pressure was a critical turn in the divestment campaign.

“the administration felt the pressure,” butler said. “they saw how seriously students were taking the movement, and it would bad on their part to not listen to what the majority of students see as a brighter future.”

once the campaign combined evidence-based research with student support, change started to occur. as student arguments grew stronger, administrators began to change their minds.

caroline mcbride and ted truscott, two members of middlebury’s board of trustees, completely changed their position on the topic, while david provost, the executive vice president of finance, acted as a liaison between president patton and the students.

pressure builds

in an already vulnerable position, the administration then began to feel pressure from other student campaigns, including those calling for a carbon tax, dining hall meat reduction, and emissions reduction.

“the whole of our environmental arguments was better than the parts, and it became clear to the administration that students care for the environment,” butler said. the administration caught on, and before long, students and faculty began working together to find an appropriate climate action plan for the school. energy2028 was born.

the announcement of energy2028 is a win for the students, the school, and our planet. paired with middlebury’s carbon neutrality announcement in 2017, the school proves it is invested in the future of its students and the planet. middlebury is a beacon of hope today when scientific predictions are indicating a bleak future for the planet.

when asked what’s next for the divestment campaign, butler and taranta laughed.

“you should see how many schools have reached out to us about their own divestment strategies,” taranta said. “a lot of students are committed to holding their schools accountable for a better future.”

brigitte has been trying to implement changes with her local neighborhood association in order to keep algae levels in check to no avail. no one was listening.

hopefully this video sheds some light on the issue of algae blooms and on one natural solution: brigitte’s small but mighty friends, water fleas (daphnia). 

sources:

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/10/algae-bloom-lake-erie-toxins-spd/

https://www.cdc.gov/habs/illness-symptoms-freshwater.html

https://www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/harmful-algal-blooms

https://www.epa.gov/nutrient-policy-data/control-and-treatment

https://dnr.wi.gov/lakes/plants/factsheets/copperfactsheet.pdf

“lady daphnia’s world.” for love of lakes, by darby nelson, michigan state university press, 2012, pp. 72–80.